Telicity
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, telicity (from the Greek τέλοϛ
, meaning "end" or "goal") is the property of a verb
or verb phrase
that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being incomplete is said to be atelic.
verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a time-frame adverbial) can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour (a time-span adverbial) can be applied to it. This can be called the time-span/time-frame test. According to this test, the verb phrase built a house is telic, whereas the minimally different built houses is atelic:
Other phrases can be tested similarly; for example, walked home is telic, because "John walked home in an hour" is fine, while "John walked home for an hour" is bad, and walked around is atelic, because "John walked around in an hour" is bad, while "John walked around for an hour" is fine.
In applying this test, one must be careful about a number of things.
s refer to events that have endpoints, and that atelic ones refer to events or states that don't have endpoints. The notion of having endpoints applies to events in the world rather than the expressions that refer to them. This is the most criticized property of this definition. In fact, every event or state in the world begins and ends at some point, except, perhaps, for states that can be described as "the existence of the universe." Certainly, John's being angry has a beginning, and, unless John is somehow eternally angry, it also has an endpoint. Thus, it is doubtful that one can define telic expressions by means of properties of the events or states that they refer to (a very similar problem arises with the notion that mass noun
s refer to things that can't be counted). Thus, recent attempts at making the notion explicit focus on the way that telic expressions refer to, or present events or states.
Put differently, one can simply define telic verbs and verb phrases as referring to events conceptualized or presented as having endpoints, and atelic verbs and verb phrases as those conceptualized or presented as lacking endpoints.
This type of exercise can serve as a reminder of the futility of trying to link linguistic semantics to the real world without considering the intermediary agent of human cognition.
. Krifka defines telic expressions as ones that are quantized
. Atelic ones can be defined in terms of cumulative reference
. An expression 'P' can be said to be quantized if and only if it satisfies the following implication, for any choice of x and y:
Suppose, for example, that John built two houses. Then each of the two building events can be described as built a house. But the building of the one house isn't, and indeed cannot be thought of a proper part of the building of the second. This contrasts with states describable as, say, walk around aimlessly. If John walked around aimlessly for two hours, then there will be many proper parts of that, that last, say 10 minutes, or 1 hour, etc. which also can be described as walk around aimlessly. Thus, for walk around aimlessly, there will be many choices of x and y, such that both can be described as walk around aimlessly, where x is a proper part of y. Hence, build a house is correctly characterized as telic and walk around aimlessly as atelic by this definition. Quantization
can also be used in the definition of count noun
s.
An expression 'P' is said to have cumulative reference
if and only if, for any choice of x and y, the following implication holds:
For example, if there is an event of John walking around from 1pm to 2pm, and another event of his walking around from 2pm to 3pm, then there is, by necessity, a third event which is the sum of the other two, which is also an event of walking around. This doesn't hold for expressions like "built a house." If John built a house from time 1 to time 2, and then he built another house from time 2 to time 3, then the sum of these to events (from time 1 to time 3) is not an event that can be described by "built a house." Cumulativity can also be used in the characterization of mass noun
s, and in the characterization of the contrast between prepositions like "to" and "towards," i.e. "towards" has cumulative reference to (sets of) paths, while "to" does not.
lately, indicating a reached goal or action completed as intended. Languages that contrast telic and atelic actions are Pirahã
and Finnic
languages such as Finnish
and Estonian
; Czech
also has a perfective suffix pre-, which is additionally telic.
In Finnish, the telicity is mandatorily marked on the object: the accusative is telic, and the partitive
is used to express atelicity. More accurately, the accusative case is used of objects that are completely affected by the situation as presented by the speaker, whereas using partitive implies that the object is only partially affected in the situation or that the situation is framed so that the object continues to be affected outside it. The terms telic and atelic are not traditionally used in Finnish grammatical description; instead, it is customary to speak of resultative and irresultative sentences.
An example of the contrast between resultative and irresultative in Finnish:
The telic sentence necessarily requires finishing the article. In the atelic sentence, it is not expressed whether or not the article is finished. The atelic form expresses ignorance, i.e. atelic is not anti-telic: Kirjoitin artikkelia ja sain sen valmiiksi "I was writing the article-PART and then got it-ACC finished" is correct. What is interpreted as the goal or result is determined by the context, e.g.
There are many verbs that correspond to only one telicity due to their inherent meaning. The partitive verbs roughly correspond with atelic verbs in Garey's definition, that is, the action normally does not have a result or goal, and it would be logically and grammatically incorrect to place them in the telic aspect. However, even inherently atelic verbs such as rakastaa "to love" can in semantically unusual constructions, where a kind of result is involved, become telic:
Also, many other stative verb
s that are in terms of their meaning inherently atelic, mark their objects in the accusative case, which is the normal case for telic situations:
Furthermore, the telicity contrast can act as case government
, so that changing the case can change the meaning entirely. For example, näin hänet (I saw him-ACC) means "I saw him", but näin häntä (I saw him-PART) means "I met him". This is often highly irregular.
The use of a telic object may implicitly communicate that the action takes place in the future. For example,
Often telicity is superficially similar to the perfective aspect, and one can find descriptions such as "roughly perfective/imperfective". However, lexical pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs are found in Finnish, and this contrast can be superimposed with the telicity contrast.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, telicity (from the Greek τέλοϛ
Telos
-Companies:* Telos , a defense contractor and software business in Ashburn, Virginia* Telos Systems, a manufacturer of equipment for broadcasting stations...
, meaning "end" or "goal") is the property of a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
or verb phrase
Verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be telic, while a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being incomplete is said to be atelic.
Testing for telicity in English
One common way to gauge whether an EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as in an hour, in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a time-frame adverbial) can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as for an hour (a time-span adverbial) can be applied to it. This can be called the time-span/time-frame test. According to this test, the verb phrase built a house is telic, whereas the minimally different built houses is atelic:
- Fine: "John built a house in a month."
- Bad: *"John built a house for a month."
- → built a house is telic
- Bad: *"John built houses in a month."
- Fine: "John built houses for a month."
- → built houses is atelic
Other phrases can be tested similarly; for example, walked home is telic, because "John walked home in an hour" is fine, while "John walked home for an hour" is bad, and walked around is atelic, because "John walked around in an hour" is bad, while "John walked around for an hour" is fine.
In applying this test, one must be careful about a number of things.
- The tenseGrammatical tenseA tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
and aspectGrammatical aspectIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
of a verb may affect the result of this test; for example, phrases with progressiveContinuous and progressive aspectsThe continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. It is a verb category with two principal meaning components: duration and incompletion...
verb forms (is going, was talking, has been doing, and so on) almost always accept for an hour and almost never accept in an hour. The test is therefore primarily of interest for verb phrases with verbs in the simple past tense. - The phrase in an hour, and phrases like it, are ambiguous; they can mean either "in the span of an hour", i.e. "within an hour", or "one hour from now". Only the former meaning is of interest; "She will be coming in an hour" is fine, but that says nothing about the telicity of the phrase will be coming.
- Strictly speaking, there is a context in which "John built houses in a month" is fine; consider "Jack took three months to build a house, while John built houses in a month." Here, what is meant is "John built houses; he built each house in a month"; and in this sense, built houses is actually telic. It can be argued that the verb phrase "build houses" is, in fact, telic at one level and atelic at another: the telicity applies to the verb without the pluralPluralIn linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
objectObject (grammar)An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
, and the atelicity applies to the verb and the object together.
Having endpoints
One often encounters the notion that telic verbs and verb phraseVerb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
s refer to events that have endpoints, and that atelic ones refer to events or states that don't have endpoints. The notion of having endpoints applies to events in the world rather than the expressions that refer to them. This is the most criticized property of this definition. In fact, every event or state in the world begins and ends at some point, except, perhaps, for states that can be described as "the existence of the universe." Certainly, John's being angry has a beginning, and, unless John is somehow eternally angry, it also has an endpoint. Thus, it is doubtful that one can define telic expressions by means of properties of the events or states that they refer to (a very similar problem arises with the notion that mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
s refer to things that can't be counted). Thus, recent attempts at making the notion explicit focus on the way that telic expressions refer to, or present events or states.
Put differently, one can simply define telic verbs and verb phrases as referring to events conceptualized or presented as having endpoints, and atelic verbs and verb phrases as those conceptualized or presented as lacking endpoints.
This type of exercise can serve as a reminder of the futility of trying to link linguistic semantics to the real world without considering the intermediary agent of human cognition.
Tending towards a goal
According to Garey who introduced this term, telic verbs are verbs expressing an action tending towards a goal envisaged as realized in a perfective tense, but as contingent in an imperfective tense; atelic verbs, on the other hand, are verbs which do not involve any goal nor endpoint in their semantic structure, but denote actions that are realized as soon as they begin.Quantization and cumulativity
Perhaps the most commonly assumed definition of telicity nowadays is the algebraic definition proposed by Manfred KrifkaManfred Krifka
Manfred Krifka is director of the Center for General Linguistics at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and editor of the academic journal Theoretical Linguistics.- Bibliography :...
. Krifka defines telic expressions as ones that are quantized
Quantization (linguistics)
In linguistics, a quantized expression is such that, whenever it is true of some entity, it is not true of any proper subparts of that entity. Example: If something is an "apple", then no proper subpart of that thing is an "apple". If something is "water", then many of its subparts will also be...
. Atelic ones can be defined in terms of cumulative reference
Cumulativity
In linguistic semantics, an expression X is said to have cumulative reference if and only if the following holds: If X is true of both of a and b, then it is also true of the combination of a and b. Example: If two separate entities can be said to be "water", then combining them into one entity...
. An expression 'P' can be said to be quantized if and only if it satisfies the following implication, for any choice of x and y:
-
- If x can be described by `P`, and y can also be described by 'P', then x is not a (mereologicalMereologyIn philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
) proper part of y.
- If x can be described by `P`, and y can also be described by 'P', then x is not a (mereological
Suppose, for example, that John built two houses. Then each of the two building events can be described as built a house. But the building of the one house isn't, and indeed cannot be thought of a proper part of the building of the second. This contrasts with states describable as, say, walk around aimlessly. If John walked around aimlessly for two hours, then there will be many proper parts of that, that last, say 10 minutes, or 1 hour, etc. which also can be described as walk around aimlessly. Thus, for walk around aimlessly, there will be many choices of x and y, such that both can be described as walk around aimlessly, where x is a proper part of y. Hence, build a house is correctly characterized as telic and walk around aimlessly as atelic by this definition. Quantization
Quantization (linguistics)
In linguistics, a quantized expression is such that, whenever it is true of some entity, it is not true of any proper subparts of that entity. Example: If something is an "apple", then no proper subpart of that thing is an "apple". If something is "water", then many of its subparts will also be...
can also be used in the definition of count noun
Count noun
In linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
s.
An expression 'P' is said to have cumulative reference
Cumulativity
In linguistic semantics, an expression X is said to have cumulative reference if and only if the following holds: If X is true of both of a and b, then it is also true of the combination of a and b. Example: If two separate entities can be said to be "water", then combining them into one entity...
if and only if, for any choice of x and y, the following implication holds:
-
- If x can be described as 'P', and y can also be described as 'P', then the mereologicalMereologyIn philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
sum of x and y can also be described as 'P'.
- If x can be described as 'P', and y can also be described as 'P', then the mereological
For example, if there is an event of John walking around from 1pm to 2pm, and another event of his walking around from 2pm to 3pm, then there is, by necessity, a third event which is the sum of the other two, which is also an event of walking around. This doesn't hold for expressions like "built a house." If John built a house from time 1 to time 2, and then he built another house from time 2 to time 3, then the sum of these to events (from time 1 to time 3) is not an event that can be described by "built a house." Cumulativity can also be used in the characterization of mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
s, and in the characterization of the contrast between prepositions like "to" and "towards," i.e. "towards" has cumulative reference to (sets of) paths, while "to" does not.
Telicity as an aspect
Telicity or telic aspect has been read as a grammatical aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
lately, indicating a reached goal or action completed as intended. Languages that contrast telic and atelic actions are Pirahã
Pirahã language
Pirahã is a language spoken by the Pirahã. The Pirahã are an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon....
and Finnic
Finnic languages
The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
languages such as Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
; Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
also has a perfective suffix pre-, which is additionally telic.
In Finnish, the telicity is mandatorily marked on the object: the accusative is telic, and the partitive
Partitive
In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...
is used to express atelicity. More accurately, the accusative case is used of objects that are completely affected by the situation as presented by the speaker, whereas using partitive implies that the object is only partially affected in the situation or that the situation is framed so that the object continues to be affected outside it. The terms telic and atelic are not traditionally used in Finnish grammatical description; instead, it is customary to speak of resultative and irresultative sentences.
An example of the contrast between resultative and irresultative in Finnish:
- Kirjoitin artikkelin. wrote-1SG article-ACC "I wrote the/an article (and finished it)"
- Kirjoitin artikkelia. wrote-1SG article-PART "I wrote/was writing the/an article (but did not necessarily finish it)"
The telic sentence necessarily requires finishing the article. In the atelic sentence, it is not expressed whether or not the article is finished. The atelic form expresses ignorance, i.e. atelic is not anti-telic: Kirjoitin artikkelia ja sain sen valmiiksi "I was writing the article-PART and then got it-ACC finished" is correct. What is interpreted as the goal or result is determined by the context, e.g.
- Ammuin karhun — "I shot the bear (succeeded)"; i.e., "I shot the bear dead". ← implicit purpose
- Ammuin karhua — "I shot (towards) the bear"; i.e., "I shot at the bear (but it did not die)".
There are many verbs that correspond to only one telicity due to their inherent meaning. The partitive verbs roughly correspond with atelic verbs in Garey's definition, that is, the action normally does not have a result or goal, and it would be logically and grammatically incorrect to place them in the telic aspect. However, even inherently atelic verbs such as rakastaa "to love" can in semantically unusual constructions, where a kind of result is involved, become telic:
- Hän rakastaa minua. (s)he love-3SG me-PART "(s)he loves me"
- Hän rakastaa minut kuoliaaksi. (s)he love-3SG me-ACC dead-TRANSL "(s)he loves me to death"
Also, many other stative verb
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
s that are in terms of their meaning inherently atelic, mark their objects in the accusative case, which is the normal case for telic situations:
- Tiedän Pekan osoitteen. know-1SG Pekka-GEN address-ACC "I know Pekka's address" (not *Tiedän Pekan osoitetta ... address-PART)
- Muistan sinun kasvosi. remember-1SG you-GEN face-PL.ACC.2SG_POSS "I remember your face" (not *Muistan sinun kasvojasi ... face-PL.PART-2SG_POSS)
Furthermore, the telicity contrast can act as case government
Case government
In linguistics, case government is government of the grammatical case of verb arguments, when a verb or preposition is said to 'govern' the grammatical case on its noun phrase complement, e.g. zu governs the dative case in German: zu mir 'to me-dative'...
, so that changing the case can change the meaning entirely. For example, näin hänet (I saw him-ACC) means "I saw him", but näin häntä (I saw him-PART) means "I met him". This is often highly irregular.
The use of a telic object may implicitly communicate that the action takes place in the future. For example,
- Luen kirjan. "I will read the book"; the action can only be complete in the future.
- Luen kirjaa. "I am reading a book" or "I will be reading a book"; no indication is given for the time.
Often telicity is superficially similar to the perfective aspect, and one can find descriptions such as "roughly perfective/imperfective". However, lexical pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs are found in Finnish, and this contrast can be superimposed with the telicity contrast.